South Korea embraces rhetoric of peace

SEOUL, March 27 (UPI) -- Peace with North Korea can be established by a foundation built brick-by-brick with its southern neighbors, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said Wednesday.

Park said Seoul's policy of peace is built around establishing a firm foundation of trust with North Korea.

"Without rushing and in the same way that we would lay one brick after another, based on trust, (we) will have to develop South-North relations step by step and create sustainable peace," she was quoted by South Korea's Yonhap news agency as saying.

Park took office in February, two weeks after North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test.

North Korea announced Wednesday that it cut a military hotline used to communicate officially with South Korea because of the "reckless acts of the enemies," Yonhap reported.

North Korea's war rhetoric has escalated in the wake of a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the February nuclear test. The North Korean government recently pulled out of the armistice that halted the Korean War in the 1950s.

The government said its nuclear program was directed against a U.S. threat. U.S. Defense Department spokesman George Little said North Korea is called on to "choose a path of peace."